X-Message-Number: 11423
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: once more: what REALLY needs doing if we want to find more cryonicists
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 23:35:46 +1100 (EST)

Hi again!

To the idea of targeting atheists, I have some negative facts to add. 

The first thing I will suggest, though, is that anyone interested in
finding out those people who are good targets for those who want to make
more cryonicists might first of all, before doing anything else, go
through Cryonet for the past few years. You'll see a description of how
to do that when you log on to Cryonet. (One service, which obviously 
would take a good deal of work, would be that of simply producing an
index --- but if you want to find out what has been already said on a
subject on Cryonet, right now you just have to search through the
postings). The ideas of targetting either atheists or humanists are
hardly very new --- several people have suggested and tried it in the
past. And unfortunately it hasn't been very successful at all.

For that matter, even being a scientist does not make someone a great deal
more willing to take up cryonics. Cryonics has now existed for over 30
years, and those ideas have been tried before. (Why aren't scientists
good choices? Well, a few are, but most are not. Cryonics may USE
scientific ideas very heavily, but those ideas presently remain unproven
and speculative. Many scientists just aren't willing to speculate far 
enough to get to cryonics).

In my own OPINION (and I want to emphasize that this is an OPINION, not
something which is proven) the emotional and intellectual traits which
allow someone to adopt cryonics include a sense of historical optimism
(progress is possible), a sense that current scientific understanding
(even the very latest) will someday be seen as falling far short of an
understanding of the world, and a sense not exactly of isolation but that
you need not form your opinions to match those of ANYONE else (perhaps
a sense of difference might explain it best, but I do not know a word
for it and will not play at making one up here).

There seem to be many people who simply cannot imagine themselves in any
other setting or with any other friends/acquaintances, or even doing 
anything other than what they are doing now. They may be highly
individual, but at the same time somehow tie themselves to those around 
them, so much that they would find themselves completely at a loss if
they suddenly awoke to a quite different society with quite different
people and personalities from those with which they are familiar. Someone
who is NOT this way: who somehow thinks of him/herself not in terms of
relations to others but in some other way, that is the kind which may
be best for taking up cryonics. And that is partly what I mean by a 
sense of difference. 

But this is only my present opinion. I may even change it by next week.

The most important thing of all that we might do to increase the number of
new cryonicists is not to thrash about with old ideas which haven't
worked, but to try to find out just what it is about cryonicists that 
made them join. So far the kind of polling needed has been started but
remains very far from complete. But one thing has become clear, at least
to me: NONE of the standard categories (Democrat, Republican, Libertarian,
intelligent, unintelligent, religious, nonreligious/humanist
/agnostic/atheist, activist, nonactivist (politically, socially,
professionally), engineer, scientist, computerist --- NONE of these
categories really describes a class of people with a significantly higher
interest in cryonics than the norm. We're going to have to work out just
who is a good person to approach seriously about cryonics. 

And just because I don't think any current category will work does NOT 
mean that I think such efforts will fail. I DO think, however, that we 
need to learn much more than we now know about what cryonicists are like
and what distinguishes them from those who RESIST cryonics before we will
have lots of success in getting new cryonicists. And yes, whatever trait
or traits these may be, we're unlikely to find them neatly labelled with
any of the standard categories.

So: Scott Badger, do your thing! And do not become diverted into side
issues. If we really want to find more cryonicists, we need very badly
to know what cryonicists are like. 

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11423